BOSTON — Mayor Michelle Wu won't move.

Facing a city council with the votes to potentially reject the $4.9 billion FY27 budget she unveiled in April, Wu is digging in — refusing to add a dollar to the proposal even as councilors balk at what she's cutting to make the math work.

"Increasing the bottom line of the budget by either inflating revenue projections or drawing from the City's reserves would be fiscally irresponsible," Wu wrote in a letter to the council Thursday. The budget, she said, "represents the maximum revenue that can be responsibly budgeted for the upcoming fiscal year."

The lecture on fiscal responsibility comes from a mayor who has grown the city's annual budget by roughly $1.1 billion since taking office — from the $3.76 billion she inherited to $4.9 billion now.

She also warned that any forced rewrite could cut spending further, citing "developments on Beacon Hill concerning the statewide budget."

What's on the chopping block

The $4.9 billion plan Wu won't reopen cuts:

Boston Veterans Services by 14.6% — roughly eleven times the average city departmental haircut, as Mass Daily News first reported. The veterans line, flat at $2.5 to $3 million a year, now sits at about one-seventh of what Wu's DEI cluster costs. That cluster has grown from $900,000 in her first year to $22.3 million across fourteen offices.
$1.4 million in federal firefighter cancer screening money — lost, and Wu's FY27 budget doesn't restore it. Per Mass Daily News, the grant had funded 587 skin-cancer screenings and caught two potential melanomas in its most recent year. When at-large councilor Erin Murphy filed a late resolution to restore the money, district 8 councilor Sharon Durkan objected on the spot and the resolution died — Durkan had fast-tracked her own emergency Ozempic bill earlier the same week.
The nonprofit pipeline that keeps running. Wu's Office for Immigrant Advancement announced $1.3 million in grants to local nonprofits through its "Weaving Well-being" initiative this spring, and the office is currently recruiting an administrator to hand out more. The Black Economic Council of Massachusetts went from $147,000 in annual revenue before Wu took office to nearly $6 million last year after its CEO joined her administration. Meanwhile Boston Fire said it couldn't afford $2 plastic hats for kids.

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The council math

Wu's problem is that the council is reading the same numbers.

Murphy told the Boston Globe that 6 to 7 members have a "strong appetite" to reject the budget outright.

"Our first responsibility is to get a budget that actually works for the city of Boston, and to me, the budget we have in front of us right now is too low," Murphy told the Globe. "Rearranging cuts inside a budget that I think is inadequate to begin with is not going to help us."

Councilor Brian Worrell is pushing to revive an older budget process in which councilors couldn't amend individual line items and the mayor's initial budget was routinely rejected — forcing negotiation.

Durkan — Wu's most reliable rubber-stamp on the council, per Mass Daily News — is urging members to drop the rejection talk.

"Any other conversation, I think, is a bit of a distraction from that," Durkan told the Globe. "We just need to get to work and roll up our sleeves and figure out what edits we want to make to the budget that's been presented to us."

The trap door

The catch: even a rejection may not get the council what it wants. According to a memo from the city's legal department that Wu's office released, the mayor can simply re-submit the same budget with no changes. And if the council fails to take definitive action by June 10, Wu's budget goes into effect automatically — meaning the council can forfeit its leverage by missing the deadline.

The bigger picture

The veterans cut is already a campaign issue. Republican gubernatorial candidate and Marine Corps captain Brian Shortsleeve rolled out an eight-point "Honoring Our Veterans" plan this week and credited both Murphy and South Boston councilor Ed Flynn — the only disabled veteran on the council — as the two members "willing to stand up and fight" for veterans inside City Hall.

Wu's letter doesn't name veterans, firefighters, or nonprofits. It frames the council's options as a binary: pass her budget, or watch her cut it further.

Wu firm on $4.9B budget that cuts veterans 14%, won't restore firefighter cancer screening cash — but keeps millions flowing to nonprofits

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